Children of the mind
by SarahBelle
Summary: Hopes spawned in the past and constructed in the present by the height of deadly genius have the chance to meet, as the Enterprise has its first encounter with androids and those who desperately seek to create true artificial intelligence.
1. Prologue the first

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Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Star Trek, in any of its forms.**

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**Friar Barnadine: Thou hast committed-**

**Barabas: Fornication – but that was in another country,**

**And besides, the wench is dead.**

**_Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta_**

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**Prologue the first**

The man sitting at the bar was watching them, she just knew it, and she was pretty sure that he could hear what they were saying as well. She was doing as he had suggested, it wasn't too hard to appear afraid and reluctant; but why couldn't the doctor keep his voice down? She definitely didn't want him here, near her, but she didn't…she had to admit that she didn't want him to go back _there, _either. Probably a touch of Stockholm syndrome in her system, but she couldn't help it; it was built upon the old but still strong foundations of that accursed admiration that simply wouldn't go away, no matter what he said or did.

"The one at the bar's been talking to the bar tender. I think he knows who you are."

"Oh, most likely. I have quite a distinctive face, after all." He knocked back the last of his beer, grinned his damned grin. "Most likely he's alerted the authorities, who will now be swarming towards this charming little bar, with the fervid intention of dragging me back to my cozy home of the last few decades."

"So…what are you going to do now?" _Why_ did he have to be smiling? Why couldn't he be nervous or fretful or even look the slightest bit worried; why wasn't he trying to figure out some way to get out of here and foil the 'man' yet again? Why was he just sitting here and letting them come to get him?

He wasn't going to answer her. They might be here any minute now, any second. She had to know, she had to ask because she knew she'd certainly never get the chance again after this. Four days, why hadn't she asked before now…

"Doctor, _why _did you have to escape? They might have let you out, there might have been time left to do what you needed. They never will now. You'll be in there forever, you know that?"

He was still smiling but there was no joy in it, anywhere in his face, in his whole body. "Don't be idealistic, my dear, it becomes ridiculous when I'm involved. Of course they'd never let me out. I know that, they know that I know that, and you should know that by now as well. From the looks of you, I might even have left it too late."

Oh, thank you so _very _much. "Then why _me_?"

He grabbed her wrist and oh it _hurt_, pulled her towards him so fast his teeth nipped her ear, probably by accident, as he spoke; so softly, so unlike his brutish action of a heart beat before. "Because you are, for want of a more categorical word, a 'good' person. Because you are the best person to be in charge of this project, and you'd do a far better job of it than I would. Because I want this to be more successful than I turned out to be. Remember, try to look scared."

"It's not like I need to try." Her heart felt like it was going to burst her throat and spill out of her neck, and if by some miracle it didn't do that then the tears would rip through the back of her gullet instead.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry for being such a troublesome house guest." He did actually sound sorry, and he sounded as if he meant it as well. "And for making such dubious use of your equipment."

"At least you didn't keep me in the dark about what you were doing; I don't think that I could have stood that." She made a show of struggling with his free arm as if she were trying to free herself. Did she want to? Every moment that they still had together was one moment closer to that dreadful instant when he would be dragged away from her.

"And I respect you far too much to do so."

"You call _this_ respect?"

"Oh yes." He looked over at the bar and back to her between a blink. "They're coming, and our friend at the bar looks like he's about to get up and intervene in our little argument. _Such_ a gentleman, he seems. You remember what we agreed?"

"What if it's too late?"

"Ridiculous. You're perfectly capable of seeing this through, my dear. I trust you; just, please, don't fail me."

"I swear," and then he let her hand go in a way that made it look as if she had wrenched free and she hit him, hit him hard across the face. She tipped the chair backwards so that she could land on the floor and scramble backwards, undignified but realistic in a mad dash for freedom. Dart away from me, he had told her, and she did, scream for help, and she did: "Stay _away _from me; god, please, _help_ me!" Gasp for breath and try for some tears if you can, and she did, and she found that she hardly had to try because they were coming out like the water pressure turned up high in a shower. "Somebody help me, don't let him near me, keep him _away_ from me!" A hand on her shoulder pulling back even further and a male body coming between her and him even as he stood up; and then there was banging and shouting and crashes and she could still hear herself as she acted and was sincere in her grief; acting the part of a victim, sincere in her sorrow that he had had to do this, that this was the only way he had been able to carry out probably his best hope.

It was the man who had been at the bar and who had spoken to the bar man who had come between her and him, which was quite nice of him, she thought, in that part of her that wasn't screaming and crying on the outside and screaming and crying on the inside. Quite chivalrous. The friendly arm was under her and bearing her up even as they were putting cuffs on him. Play the victim, he had told her, scream about being a prisoner in your own home for four days, give hints at what I might or might not have done to you. She does this and then she buries her face in her rescuer's shoulder, though not too hard. She howls. Oh, she howls.

They pull him away from her. The last sight she gets of him, looking away and out from the fine cloth of a rather expensive tunic, is a smile that might be sardonic and might be happy and might be relieved and might be anything. She wouldn't see him again so that she could ask; she took a guess and settled at grateful. She likes to think it was that, or partly that.

The distinguished gentleman who had saved even when she had not needed to be saved – or might not have needed, at least – soon lets go of her when Star Fleet sweep around her; he goes off to tell an officer about what has happened here, how he recognized him and knew what to do. She hears him say that he longs to get off this planet and away from this people, when such a man as this, of such intelligence and potential, can do such things. She hates his words and agrees with them too. She needs to go away as well, far away. She's so, so sick of humans, of bi-peds, or every single life form. She needs to be alone among her computers. She needs peace.

She is swamped by those needing to scan her and question her and poke her and prod her and find out what he's been doing in those days since he slipped away from them and into her house and her life again. Well, let them question and scan and poke and prod; she remembers what he told her: the more you look like a victim, the less likely they are to search you. And once they're done with her and free her from their concern and guilt at having let him out and get to her, she has _such_ a lot of work to do.

They both have a long way to go.

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**And let the speculations begin...now! And yes, this will have something to do with the universe of the film. It'll have a lot to do with it, in fact.**


	2. Prologue the second

**Disclaimer: Oh, you know, the usual.**

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Prologue the second

Hello?

Merrick, is that you?

Oh, hello, Mr. Brack. Dad's asleep at the moment, but I could wake him up if you really wanted-

No, no, I wouldn't want to disturb him. I will call back.

Will you? You said last time you were here you'll be going away soon and that Dad would be 'unlikely to contact you' any time in the future.

Rest assured, Merrick, I _will _call Aymeric back. I respect him far too deeply to leave the planet without a final farewell.

He's going to miss you, you know, Mr. Brack. You're probably one of the closest friends he has, and doesn't that just say something when he's never even met you outside the house. I mean, you take care of him. He just gets annoyed when I do that, but he actually listens to you, especially about those stupid slippers of his.

He listens to you too, Merrick.

You don't know that, Mr. Brack.

Oh, I do.

Mr. Brack?

Yes, Merrick?

You were reading that PADD that I put down for a while when you last came here, weren't you.

Yes.

You know what was on it.

Yes, I do. You don't have to be so blunt, you know, this line is perfectly safe. Nobody is listening.

How do you know that?

I know.

Fine. So, you know. What are you going to do about it?

I will never let the contents of it be publicly known.

I don't care about that, that's in the past. Or it should be left there anyway, never mind what Dad says. What about you, what are you going to do?

I will use what I have learned as I see fit, sparingly. I will conduct my own research. I will come to my own conclusions. I will have plenty of time on my hands, after all. And no one to see me do it, and no one to see the results. What about you? Are you content to let that knowledge be?

Are you serious? Cybernetics is the future.

A future you want to be part of?

I could tell Dad what you did, you know. I could tell him that you stole from what was ours by right.

But have I stolen? And would he care?

Probably not. And he hardly knows how to deal with me, let alone any more children.

Children?

Children of the mind, Mr. Brack.

Ah.

I wonder who'll be first, don't you, Mr. Brack?

It does not matter to me. I have time enough.

Will you visit my father again before you leave?

Perhaps.

Good enough. Goodbye, Mr. Brack.

Goodbye, Merrick. And good luck.

You too.

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Apologies for such a short chapter. The next one will be longer and much more exciting, I promise you!


	3. Chapter One

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek, or the phrase 'ghost in the machine'. Just so you know.**

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**Chapter One**

"_No!"_

She'd witnessed this kind of tragedy more times than she would ever be content about; a doctor working desperately over a patient when an operation that had seemed to be going so well had instead gone wrong, calling for tools and equipment, rattling off medical procedures to those around them, injecting and connecting, anything to keep the dying body alive. And she wanted to help, but this was one time when she simply couldn't, because what her lone friend was bending over and delving into was not alive in the strictest sense of the word, or even alive at all.

She looked away from him and saw, at the end of her arm, that she was still holding a tea cup from which steam was still rising. It was all happening so quickly. Was the tea still boiling hot as it was when he'd poured it out for her as she began to tell him why she'd come?

"Come on! Come on, please! Oh, come _on!"_

He ran away from the table for a moment to grab something from a pile of other somethings; what seemed to be the crude and unfinished metal skeleton of an arm had whatever it was that he wanted caught in its fiber optics and he had to shake it off before he could get to work again with the new tool. It landed at his feet, clang clank, with the fingers stretched out towards her. As if the thing on the table had by some horrid method managed to grow an arm in whatever agony it might be feeling, had reached out for mercy and had the limb cut off for its trouble.

Oh, he struggled and fought for that spark of existence and awareness and tried to fan it and build it up again, but even she, hardly an expert on cybernetics, could see that it was worse than useless, that all that was left was a ghost in a machine and even the ghost was giving up. She put the cup down on a surface she didn't even look at, her palm was so sweaty she was afraid it would slip from her and crash and distract him in the last few seconds his work had, because if _that_ happened she didn't know if he would ever forgive her or himself.

And – _there_ it went. The lights sputtered and were gone. Merrick knew even before she did and stopped everything for a heart beat or two, moving, blinking, breathing, and then he groaned and dropped the strange tool he was holding and fell backwards onto the floor, like a droid that had stopped moving and overbalanced without momentum.

It was so utterly absurd coming after what he had been so emotionally involved in that she felt a giggle try to break out. She dug her thumb nail into the pad of her finger to shut it up. Shit, had he fainted from it all? No, his eyes were still open and aware as far as she could see, and he looked so many things.

"Merrick?" Quick to his side and kneel, she took his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back, which was good, he was in a mood to respond for a change, and he didn't look like he'd gone into shock. Damn that she hadn't brought a tricorder, didn't think ahead that she might need one. "Merrick? Please don't do the eccentric act again, I don't think I could take it right now."

"_You_ don't think you could take it?" Up he pushed himself and onto his elbows, not without a wince from banged muscles and bones. "Again, Christine. Again and again and _again_. Why can't I stop them from dying as soon as they encounter something too complicated? _Why_ can't their thoughts grow bigger?"

He's going to cry, I know it. Men aren't supposed to cry, our weak frail little gender has that release but they don't, they can't. Why can't they be allowed to cry so that I can get used to this kind of thing?

"I don't know."

"No, and _I_ don't know either. I should know, but I _don't!" _He slammed a palm to his face as if he would stick his fingers in his eye, and she wouldn't put it past him. But he only near slapped himself on the cheek, leaving a smear of yellow from his efforts on the table.

"Merrick, _stop_ it. I'm well within my own duty as a doctor to sedate you, you know."

She did what she was trained to do; she got him to sit down, or rather he let her sit him down on a pile of more somethings, she wrapped a grimy tarp about him and gave him the tea she hadn't even tasted. From the way he sipped at it, it was still hot. So little time had passed since it began. Perhaps the puddle that had been created when he had dropped the tea pot in his haste to try and save what he thought of as a life, perhaps that would still be hot too.

When she felt she could leave him alone she went and tried to find a cloth to clean up the mess - always keep the operating theatre tidy – but achieving that was like a modern quest for the Grail. Any piece of material small enough was covered in spots of that yellow synthetic liquid he liked to use as a component in his works. Eventually she just grabbed one and used that regardless.

How can Merrick bear to live like this? But he grew up in splendid squalor, he's used to a jumble of books and PADDs and furniture and, just recently, mechanical body parts; he barely knows anything else. And, let's not forget, he's a genius, and with genius comes the polite word for madness. Eccentric. I should be used to this, I'm all but living with an eccentric myself.

Why aren't I?

"Don't you _ever_ clean up, Merrick?"

"Generally I just let it pile up until you come along and work your magic, Chris." At least some of his humor had come back, even if it was pretty terrible humor at that.

She found a bigger cloth and put it over the failed, dead thing; she picked up the arm – how it undermines all she strives for, why have your crushed arm repaired with painstaking surgery when you can have it replaced with a new stronger synthetic one, thank goodness people are still so focused on their own flesh and senses – deposited it with at least some care on the pile again, gathered up the pieces of the tea pot and wrapped them in one more cloth. She didn't feel up to the gargantuan task of finding a recycling device.

"Merrick?"

She got a murmur as an answer.

"Merrick, you need to get _out_ of here. I know that you're perfectly capable of functioning as a member of society, even if you don't like it. And you've suffered a number of losses which would traumatize anyone."

"_You _don't think they're losses."

"No, perhaps not in the way that you do. But it's not about what _I_ think, it's about what _you_ think. This is the third time this has happened?"

"The fourth, but I appreciate that you tried to keep track." He was sipping more and more now, the hot liquid waking him up out of whatever funk he might have been slipping into. Good, that was good.

"The fourth, then. The fourth time that something you've been deeply and emotionally invested in has failed. Rather traumatically, as well." She'd be able to recall that stretching pleading unreal arm with unwelcome ease. "If you stay shut up in this house of horrors, it's going to eat you from the inside out." He was looking away, keep his interest. "For goodness sake, Merrick, how can you continue with this 'quest' of yours if you're still stewing in the failures of the past? You're always telling me that the past is another country. If you're not careful you're going to be stranded here, forever." The words were trite, but hopefully he'd get the message, he'd understand that she could have added 'like your father', but hadn't.

"What would you suggest I do then, oh Doctor-to-be Chapel?"

"Just as I said; get out of here, out of this lab. Do something _different_, something other than androids and positronic brains. Write a new paper, find another project if only for a while; you could head an expedition or something. That's what I was going to tell you, what Roger's planning. He wants to go to Exo III. If you asked him-"

"Roger's a medical archaeologist, Chris."

"What, you think I don't know that?"

"Nothing of the sort. I just doubt that whatever he wants to research will hold any interest for me." He slurped the last of the tea and was left with the bottom of the cup to stare at.

"That's a lie. You wouldn't have become friends with him at all if you didn't find his work interesting on at least some level."

He clapped his hand to his heart, over theatrical as he often was. "Ah! You wound me, Christine dearest! There are _plenty_ of people who I associate with that work in careers that I don't find particularly interesting."

"Only because you have to, and that doesn't mean you _like_ them either."

"Too true, too true." He left his hand fall as he turned to look at what lay on the table. "I just…Christine, I get what you're trying to say. Really, I do. But…let me think about it, all right?"

That was always what an addict did. Plead for time, let me think about it. "All right, but…Merrick, you're coming home with me tonight."

"No! I can't leave!" He was up and starting towards the table again; get a hold on him and quick. "There's things I need to do!"

"And they can wait. Merrick, you've _failed_, all right? You've failed and you need to come to terms with that. It won't help to stay around here." How can he even sleep here with so many metal skeletons, so many half finished things that stumbled out of horror films of ages ago, and from nightmares? "You're coming with me and we're going to find a way to get you off this planet, at least for a while. I'll call Roger, he's bound to have got some contacts. Come on, Merrick, come away from the table. There's nothing you can do about it now."

"I've got to try again, Christine. I've _got_ to _try_." But he let her lead him once more, and that was good too.

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Yes, Nurse Chapel's in this story! Hooray! She **_might_ not be in it that much, though, since this is still 2258 and Korby didn't go off to Exo III until 2261 or shortly before that, and she joined Starfleet after then so…yeah, I geeked out a bit on this. (I also watched 'What little girls are made of' a lot in preparation. That's probably my favorite of all Chapel's hairstyles. Her hair was all soft and fluffy, not that stupid helmet that turned up later!)** **Of course she was actually already in Starfleet in the film so this is almost definitely not canon, but hey, she was off camera all the time, she didn't say anything, that's enough for me to take license. Plus she could actually be in the fleet at the moment anyway; I'm still undecided and vague enough to fit it in.**


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